


now that we both love you

by janie_tangerine



Series: hearts fic thing series [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Hearts, M/M, Multi, Quite Literally, Soulmates, Stannis Baratheon Has Issues, THE HEARTS AU IS BAAAACK, the seaworths for westeros's most adjusted couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23144338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: in which Davos and Marya get two halves of the same heart.They have no idea it belongs to their future liege lord.
Relationships: Davos Seaworth/Marya Seaworth, Stannis Baratheon/Davos Seaworth, Stannis Baratheon/Davos Seaworth/Marya Seaworth, Stannis Baratheon/Marya Seaworth
Series: hearts fic thing series [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1623322
Comments: 21
Kudos: 188





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> AAAND FOR MORE CORONAVIRUS FIC, have the stannis/davos/marya installment of these series! the original anon for which I wrote chapter one wanted _Davos and Marya each get half of the same heart. It turns out it belongs to their liege Lord, Stannis_ , but then I got another request for a sequel which was _When does Davos realize that the heart belongs to Stannis? I'd like to read that._ , which is the one I'm publishing here. For anyone who hasn't followed the rest, this is a soulmate au where you get your soulmate's heart (or they get yours) in various states of health and how you treat it affects the other person - also technically it's set before all the other three/at least at the same time of the beginning of the jaimebrienne one but you don't need to read the rest to know anything that goes on here. Have fun, I hope anon doesn't mind that I'm late, I own nothing, the title is from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and I'll saunter back downwards in my quarantined land /o\

“Davos…?” Marya asks, opening the door cautiously.

When he turns to look at her, he’s not surprised to find out that there’s a small ball of blue-grey light in her hands.

He’s not surprised because it matches the one in _his_ that appeared out of bloody nowhere not long ago.

“I see you have… the other half?” He ventures, because - well. It’s a heart, he knows it, he can feel it, it’s _beating_ against its skin and while the surface is definitely cracked, it’s also not seeping red out of it, but it’s way smaller than the one he had for a few days when Marya’s had appeared in his room and she had gotten his at the same time. There is no way they don’t have half of a new one.

She nods, moving closer to him. Her half is the exact same as his own, maybe his is more grey than blue in it while hers is the contrary, but still.

“This is - weird,” she says. “I mean. I had yours, didn’t I?”

“And I had _yours_ ,” Davos assures her. “Uhm. Maybe we should - I don’t know. See if -”

“Oh, right. Sure. Let’s try it, I guess,” Marya says, carefully moving her half next to Davos’s -

And it _latches_ to the other. For a moment they have to close their eyes against the blinding blue light filling the room, and then there it is. A full heart, equally blue and grey, still covered in sealed cracks, beating slowly but steadily. They look at each other - he doesn’t ask her if she has set her eyes on someone else same as she doesn’t ask _him_ , but if they _both_ had a piece of it…

“Does this mean,” he asks, “that we’re, uh, supposed to be with _someone else_?”

“Surely it’s not any of your friends,” she jokes, half-laughing, and he pretends to be outraged, but he’s pretty sure it’s not a good attempt.

“Why,” he says, “what do my friends have that’s so wrong?”

“Your _friends_ never caught my eye, _you_ did,” she says, shaking her head. “And since I know that before we married you and Sallador _definitely_ exchanged favors -”

“How did you -”

“It’s the way he talks to you,” she says. “And it’s _fine_ , I mean, I’d have figured. Anyway, since I suppose that you _do_ look at men that way, too, it has to be another man, doesn’t it?”

Davos nods - it does make sense. He _does_ like both men and women, after all, while Marya definitely does not, not that it ever mattered where they both come from. He sighs. “Well,” he says, “I suppose that since I have to get out and make sure the kids don’t starve, while I’m out you - just keep it safe. We will find out who is it, at some point.”

She nods. “This is - weird, though. Isn’t it?”

“It is,” he says. “But - I suppose stranger things have happened.”

He doesn’t know how they would make space for a _third_ person when they can barely get by like this.

Still -

Well. He’ll see if he can make some money on the side smuggling things out of King’s Landing, meanwhile. This war hasn’t helped anyone here, and the kids need to eat.

***

Stannis realizes it’s _gone_ a week into the siege.

One minute he was calculating how to best divide the food since unless Robert wins the war _fast_ they’re looking at months of being unable to leave Storm’s End, and the other -

The other the left side of his chest has gone silent.

What the -

He puts his hand over his breast.

He doesn’t feel his heart anymore.

For a moment, he feels sick - people _did_ whisper that he was so closed off that his heart must really have been as good as dead back in the day, and he’s heard it for a long enough time, and so this will prove them right, won’t it -

That is, until he realizes that it’s not exactly what _that_ means.

If his heart is gone… then _someone out there has it_.

He can feel his throat working up and down as he shakes his head all over again.

Someone has his heart.

There is - some _person_ out there who not only has it, but who, according to those stupid songs, should be _right_ for him, and this when he’s spent years aware that his brothers were people others liked, _he_ wasn’t.

And he can’t even go look for it now because - well. If no one else holds up the fort, the war is lost and Robert’s as good as dead and as much as they might resent each other that’s not what he wants, that’s not -

He breathes in and out, in and out.

Very well.

Someone out there wouldn’t probably hate his company on sight. That’s - reassuring to know. He doesn’t think it’s anyone he knows or he’s met, since he’s never… _liked_ anyone that way.

But for now he can’t - he can’t worry about it.

He’ll hold on the fort and they will win the war, hopefully, and if they don’t, well, then it’s nothing he should worry about.

_After_ they win -

Maybe he’ll consider looking. Maybe.

But the lack of that heartbeat doesn’t seem so daunting, now.


	2. Chapter 2

There’s _something_ about Lord Stannis that makes Davos wonder if they haven’t somehow met already, but he immediately discards the option — there is _no_ way they ever met before. How could they? Davos has never been in Storm’s End _proper_ and Lord Stannis certainly never visited Flea Bottom when in King’s Landing. Except that when he speaks he sounds _familiar_ and Davos sure as the Seven Hells wishes he knew _why_ , and there’s something about his eyes that screams _familiar_ , too.

Which makes absolutely no fucking sense, because _how_ could anything about a _lord_ from a Great House be familiar to _him_? He’s Davos’s sovereign or most likely soon-to-be sovereign the moment Davos bends the knee to him, and certainly those few fingertips are a meager price to pay if it means that his children won’t grow up poor and hungry and illiterate and that Marya gets to have a nice keep for herself and he doesn’t have to smuggle in order to make ends meet. He tries to forget about it. It’s most likely… Davos getting beside himself, he decides. There is no way it’s _anything_ else.

Except that — he hears the whispers around him. Of how Lord Stannis is hard and does not bend and doesn’t like to talk to people, and that he’s cold and unfriendly. Except that the times they talked on their own, that wasn’t what Davos had seen. Davos had seen a man who was very, _very_ lonely, and the fact that he’s so young tugs at Davos’s heartstrings because when he was his age… well, he and Marya had just had their first and he barely had money to buy their food, but he had friends, he knew people, he — people said he was a nice person to talk to because he was a good listener, and he has a feeling Stannis never really shared that experience.

_Except_ , he thinks once, traitorously, _did he ever have anyone who really did listen to him_? King Robert barely seems to care that the siege of Storm’s End saved the war and Lord Stannis’s younger brother seems to prefer everyone else’s company, and Davos sees how Stannis’s blue eyes take a tinge of hurt whenever he sees Renly talking to… anyone else but him, he supposes.

He doesn’t know why he can’t stop thinking about that dumb feeling —

Except that then they’re taking a walk towards the gardens in the Red Keep at this umpteenth royal feast that they have to attend because it was after a ceremony in which Robert granted all the new lords made after the Rebellion their keeps, _Davos_ included.

And he hears —

_Look at the king’s brother_ , some knight says. _I can believe he doesn’t have a heart. Which poor bastard or poor lady would get saddled with it, after all? No one would find anything in such a boring man_.

Davos, for a moment, feels a distinct need to go and talk to those people, but then —

“Let that be, Ser Davos,” Stannis sighs. “It’s nothing that’s not true.”

_Wait_.

“That’s not true… how?”

Stannis shrugs, minutely. “I do _not_ have my heart anymore,” he says. “I haven’t since… a week into the siege, I think. Give or take. And no one has ever found me interesting for my wit or my brilliant company.” His voice takes a dark tinge for a moment, and Davos is about to protest —

“And for that matter, I was almost… happy, to feel it gone,” Stannis whispers, as if it’s a secret just between then, and wait, he _did_ drink a glass of wine before, and he’s not quite looking at Davos yet, but —

“My lord,” Davos says, “are you sure _I_ am —”

“What,” Stannis sighs, “someone I should share this with? And why not? You, _Ser_ , might have been about the one person in years, bar the maester, who has in fact enjoyed my company. So I _could_ tell you that I was marginally happy about it because it somehow meant that there was… one wretched soul out there who wouldn’t hate my company on principle. Alas, they certainly were not present at the siege. Regardless, none of them was wrong, and — I am adjusted to this kind of comment.”

Davos _was_ trying to find something… neutral but comforting to say, and then suddenly he realizes.

Oh.

“My lord,” he asks, “ _when_ did you say that your heart disappeared, if I may ask again?”

“A week into the siege. Why?”

Davos nods, and tries to do the math.

Thing is —

Suddenly, in the pale moonlight, Stannis’s eyes had looked _the exact same blue_ of the heart currently in Marya’s custody. He doesn’t even _dare_ presuming that it might belong to _him_ , but —

He tries to remember when it actually appeared, and — he doesn’t know if it was _a week_ after the siege, but it was very soon after it begun, after all news hadn’t traveled _that_ fast.

It _could_ have been —

He looks back at Stannis. Now that he connected the two things, those eyes _do_ look the right color, and considering everything he’s seen, it makes sense that the heart would have been cracked but sealed, because after all isn’t the man in front of him… _exactly_ like that?

And what did he say before? _There was one wretched soul who wouldn’t hate my company on principle_. Davos certainly doesn’t, but —

He has a feeling it’s not _one_ person. He has a feeling Marya _would_ quite get along with their sovereign, should they —

_Should they_ —

“My lord,” he says, quietly, “I was — I think there is something I should show you, back at my home. Would you be so kind to accompany me?”

“You mean… where you live?”

“I would not ask you to come to Flea Bottom for something menial, but —”

“That’s not the problem,” Stannis shakes his head. “I certainly do not mind going there. And if Aerys failed those people, I should see how they live so my brother doesn’t end up doing the same. It is just… nothing important. And I could not wait to be out of that nonsensical feast. Do lead the way as soon as we are out.”

Davos nods and follows Stannis out of the castle before moving next to him and heading home. He tries to not look his way _too much_ because while something tells him _for sure_ that Stannis won’t care for where he lives or his neighbors or the poverty he has come from that his current home is surrounded with, but he still… would rather not look. So he leads until they arrive at the small house where thankfully most of the lights are out, so it will be just… the three of them discussing it.

“This is outrageous,” Stannis mutters, “Aerys should have never let it get this bad. And Lannister should not have either.”

Davos smiles slightly, unable to keep it in. “You might be the first highborn I meet who actually… would say such a thing.”

Stannis mutters something under his breath and nothing more.

Well.

Davos knocks on the door, thrice, and a moment later Marya has opened it.

“Davos, weren’t you supposed to be — oh. My lord —”

“My lady,” Stannis replies, a bit stiff but _less_ than he had been with others in the castle. Marya immediately moves back and ushers them in, then closes the door.

“Davos,” she says, “I mean, apologies to my lord, but didn’t we agree that —”

_That we’d leave here in a few days and never come back and that your new lord would never have to see this house_ , she doesn’t say. Because that’s what they had agreed.

“Marya,” he interrupts her, “I think — I think you should fetch… the only valuable we have in this house.”

Marya, who knows _entirely too well_ which is the valuable in question, first looks at him as if he’s just gone insane, but then her eyes move towards Stannis, who is standing next to the window and looking like he has no idea of what is even going on here, which is fair, he _wouldn’t_ , and he knows she came to his same conclusions a few moments later when her lips part and her mouth falls open for a moment.

“Oh,” she says. “ _Oh_. Are you sure —”

“Marya, you know as well as I do,” he replies. “Go get it.”

“Uhm,” Stannis says as she heads for their room, “a _valuable_?”

“The only one we have, indeed,” Davos says as Marya nods and goes to their room.

“And why should I see it?” Stannis replies, sounding… confused. Davos can understand him even too well.

“You will understand shortly, my lord,” Davos says, and indeed Marya is out of the room with a small chest pressed to her breast a moment later.

Then she clears her throat. “Well,” she says, “my husband, and honestly… now that I met you, my lord, I can see why… thinks that the valuable in question belongs to you.” Then she opens the chest.

Where that gray-blue heart is beating _slightly_ faster, and Davos can see that he was right the moment Stannis’s eyes widen and his lips part and his hand goes to the left side of his chest.

“What —” He says, looking up at the two of them, and _now_ he does look as young as he actually is, Davos thinks with a pang to _his_ own heart, “ _how_ —”

“Actually,” Davos says, “It was split in half when — it appeared.”

“ _Split_?”

“Yes,” Davos nods. “One appeared all of a sudden next to me, the other next to _her_. We tried to join them and it worked, and — that’s how it’s been ever since. I hadn’t realized it might have been yours until tonight, but — I had a suspicion. And I had to check. But it seems like I am not wrong, am I?”

“No,” Stannis shakes his head, looking again at the two of them as if he can’t even begin to wrap his head around what’s happening. “No, it’s — I know it is, but — _the both of you_?” His voice becomes smaller, as if he can’t begin to grasp the concept.

Davos turns to look at Marya, who is equally surprised as him, most likely, but he cannot exactly tell her _our lord whose heart is technically with us now cannot apparently conceive that two people might actually care for him because he could barely believe there was_ one _who would_.

“So it seems,” he says, because _someone_ has to break the silence, “and — well, I can see why.”

“You — _what_?” Stannis sounds like he had been expecting anything but _that_ , and Davos just — there’s a warmth in his chest that he knows is anything but casual or born of gratefulness, and from the way Marya is looking at Stannis _now,_ he thinks she’s feeling it, too.

Davos half-shrugs. “I think this conversation should be had _after_ you get this back.”

“Yes,” Marya agrees, still _looking_ at Stannis, and Davos… Davos _wants_ her to look, he realizes. Is she thinking that those eyes are piercing and that there’s something handsome and _strong_ in that hard face, as young as it is, and in that lean chest that still shows that the man went for so long without proper nourishment, same as _Davos_ had? Well, if _she_ had the second piece…, “it wouldn’t be right otherwise.”

“I — all right,” Stannis says, his voice half-shaking, as he reaches to his chest, opens his sober black jerkin and uncovers enough of his chest to show the place where his heart should be. Marya holds the chest to Davos who takes the heart and slowly, carefully pushes it in past Stannis’s pale skin, and it lights up in pale blue before it’s gone and Davos can feel Stannis’s fast heartbeat under his fingertips.

Stannis takes in a deep breath, then another, and when he looks up at the both of them his eyes are a bit wet and Davos is halfway sure he doesn’t even realize it.

“Oh,” he says, “it — it’s different.”

“How?” Davos asks.

“It feels like —” He shakes his head. “Gods. This is — not really dignified.”

“My lord,” Marya says, “I don’t think that would be a problem to _us_.”

“Don’t — I mean, if we’re — if _we are_ , you shouldn’t — use that,” he chokes out. “Anyway. It feels like… well. The way it did when your husband showed up with his precious salted fish,” he blurts, his cheeks just barely flushing, and Davos _knows_ even too well what it means, and —

Stannis’s hands are trembling. He can see it. He breathes in, out, then he looks at the both of them again, something like _longing_ in his eyes, and before Davos can do anything, Marya has tentatively touched his fingers, and when Stannis doesn’t move Davos is quick to grasp his other hand. His fingers are long, _strong_ even if lean, and when Davos holds it tighter, he grasps back like he’s never done it before.

Maybe he hasn’t.

Gods, that would be _sad_ —

“Maybe,” Stannis chokes out, a moment later, “I — I should go to Dragonstone soon.” He doesn’t seem to _relish_ it, but — “And my brother still hasn’t decided which keep you should have. If you would both join me there for a while along with your family, it could be somewhere to… figure this out?” He sounds like he’s choking the words out, as if he thinks they still might say no.

Davos, who has been married to Marya long enough to know when she’s in agreement with him, knows that she won’t.

“We would be glad to,” he says, “my —”

“Don’t,” Stannis says again. “Same as the lady. Please, if — I can’t —”

“We would be glad to… _Stannis_ ,” Davos says, tasting the name on his tongue, and somehow not putting a title before it makes him feel dizzy, but Stannis looks relieved at that, and when Marya does the same he looks _even more_ relieved, and his hands haven’t moved away from theirs.

Davos has no bloody clue of how they’re going to make this work.

But right then, he knows they _will_.

Somehow, they will.

End.


End file.
